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Zed is not ok

Hacccchan·2/9/2015, 3:45:17 AM·5 votes·1,362 views

"Note: For most of the following, I'm assuming that Zed has built BotRK, Black Cleaver and Last Whisper and is level 18 (that's about 9k gold with boots and random consumables). I'm also assuming that his target has invested a similar amount in their own items. A "full" combo looks like this:

Ignite, Ultimate, Shadow Slash, Auto-attack, BotRK, Shuriken, Shadow Slash, Auto-attack (possibly procing his passive), Ultimate popping. (For the quotes)"

Ok, so i'm here on talking about zedZed , ok, so, where do i even start with this guy? I mean, he can 100-0 anyone that doesn't build armor, can still insta-gib anyone that stacks health, and deals tons of damageitem 3078. Most of the stuff is said in the link, but ill quote some of the text. "The assassination ability alone is impressive but, frankly, it's nothing new. LeBlanc used to be able to do similar damage and yet she rarely saw competitive play. So what's really different about Zed?

STRONG WAVE CLEAR

Unlike LeBlanc, who has significant trouble farming, or Kassadin, who shares Zed's melee restrictions, but little else. Zed is an energy-based champ with strong AoE abilities and a good early escape tool. He can farm easily, safely and efficiently for the early game." I do not own any of these quotes.

Ok, so, Zed is energy-based, and everyone knows about the energy champions. Yeah, that regen though. Anyways, he also has a passive that makes farming for him SUPER easy. Anything at half health takes tons of dmgitem 3078, and not just to creeps, but to ANYTHING. Zed passive states "Zed's basic attacks against targets below 50% health deal 6 / 8 / 10% of the target's maximum health as bonus magic damage. This effect can only occur on the same target once every few seconds." (Thank you League of Legends Wiki) Even though it has a 10 second cooldown, most champions will already be dead, so the cooldown is really irrelevant. "Finally, Shadow Slash and Razor Shuriken have exceptionally low cooldowns. They're 4 and 6 seconds respectively. Throw the energy restore inherent in Living Shadow (20 at level 1) on top of that, and you can see why Zed isn't particularly strongly gated by his energy mechanic." About that, low cooldowns means tons of spamming, and these cooldowns make it even easier to insta-gib anything and everything. At 40% Cooldown Reduction, I can't even image what monstrosity that would create.

Finally, I get to talk about his ultimate. Ok, so let me get this straight rito, he can jump in, insta-kill someone, then safely escape unharmed? You can cc him, but once it ends he'll just press R and go back to where he was. That is not ok. Even Fizz (Everyone's favorite pop soda :D) has some limitations when escaping from fights. But zed, he just goes in, kills someone, and gets out unharmed. Its like nothing happened, and the champion that died wasn't even there in the first place.

Ok, next, his base stats.

"RESILIENCY

Zed has one of the highest base health's in the game (445), with even champs like Singed, Olaf and Rammus clocking in below that. His base armor is also high (17.5), with only a few champions showing higher numbers. Given that the early game involves a lot of auto-attacking, this gives him the opportunity to bully at level 1 better than almost any other champion.

Late game, his Living Shadow and his ult give him a huge amount of mobility that he's constantly using. Finding Zed in a fight is very difficult, and, as Ryu found out the hard way, he can dodge melee auto-attacks while he's killing you. This makes him incredibly difficult to pin down."

Zed is not a tank, so why does he have so much health and armor at level one? Rito please explain this logic. Did you guys intend Zed to be a tank in the first place? Tone down those numbers, and maybe that will make him more balanced. And once again, his Living Shadow and Ult, tons of mobility item 3078 +summoner 6+summoner 4 =Zed .

Also,

"SPLIT PUSHING

A critical component of the current meta is the ability to split push. Zed is unique in that he can naturally wave clear, can escape AND can also 1v1 anyone who comes to visit him in lane. He's nearly unanswerable as a split pusher, even when he's a bit behind because of that ability to escape, and thus choose the battles he wants."

Ok, so he builds AD. That is main source of damage, yeah? Ok I understand that its ok for him to build what he has to build to do damage, but in turn, that makes him really good at split pushing. I was in a game once, Zed came up to inhib, 10 autos, and it blew up. Are you kidding me? And no one dared to get close because he would insta-gib all of us. A champion that is exceptional at split pushing, and deals tons of damage? Yeah, not ok.

So you guys removed DFG because "Our initial goal with Deathfire Grasp was to make a "tank-busting" item that could do exactly that: bust down tanks when they're knocking on the front door. After the introduction of Liandry's Torment, however, tank-busting was replaced with tank-burning and, instead, Deathfire Grasp became the item for assassins to stack another nuke spell on top of their already burst-heavy kits. While we like to keep itemization options available for those who want it, the sheer existence of Deathfire Grasp has given us a few headaches in the past and present:

1.) Adding Deathfire Grasp to a bursty kit really amps up that "woah what happened to me" moment when someone nukes you from orbit. In the past, when we see mages pick up a DFG to double-down on their burst, we've had to balance around that champion which, in turn, makes them even more reliant on DFG to blow people up (or they get changed so much they find an alternative playstyle). Vicious cycle.

2.) Deathfire Grasp also adds a lot more reliability to a mage's assassination attempts, which means they need to commit less for them. If, for example, Ahri only needs to use one charge of Spirit Rush to nuke her target (with DFG + Q + W), she frees herself to use her other two charges to get back to safety. If we accept this will always happen with DFG, Ahri ends up without a lot of extra 'power budget' to do other cool mage-y things like sustained damage or kiting.

As we mentioned in the foreword, we're looking into champions who will be heavily impacted, but some of our larger projects (Veigar, Katarina, Mordekaiser) have to wait until 5.3. There were also a few mages we haven't given sorry-we-removed-DFG-changes to, specifically because we examined them and realized they either needed the power reduction that comes with losing DFG or they have access to alternative item paths and won't be as affected." Yes that is a lot to quote, but then again, I have a lot to say. Ok, so you guys want to make its sort of "anti-assassin." Zed can still do that, and get out unharmed. Yeah, 'nuff said.

Ok, so I think I have talked about everything i needed to talk about. Of course, Rito games it rito games, and they may not do what the community thinks, but i just want to get my word out there, and im sure many people agree with me in a way or another. Here, ill take make a quick summary, and give some things you could do to tone down zed:

  1. He can ult in, insta-gib someone, then escape out unharmed.
  2. Q and E has insanely short cooldowns.
  3. God of split pushing.
  4. High base HP and armor, but not a tank.
  5. Easy farming.
  6. Can 100-0 even tanks.

What you can do: First of all, change back his ult the way it used to be, remember? The Shadow would be behind the enemy, so that zed would have some trouble trying to escape, which would be much more fair, then KILL-ESCAPE. K second, reduce the damage by a little not a lot. 3rd, tone down those base stats a little. The health is fine, but the armor must go down. 4th, a bit of a passive nerf? Maybe make it under 40% or 30%?

And that is all I have to say. This took me a really long time to make this, and i hope my effort pays off to make the game more fun to play for people that play squishy champions (ex. Mid laners and ADCs). What do you guys think about Zed? Comment away! Welp, I gotta get my beauty rest now, goodbye, and have a nice day! :^)

                                                                                                                                                               -Everyone's best bud
                                                                                                                                                                    Gliscorus (Glis) ![summoner 14](https://raw.communitydragon.org/latest/plugins/rcp-be-lol-game-data/global/default/data/spells/icons2d/summonerignite.png)

Citation: The Mittani: http://www.themittani.com/news/lol-pros-agree-zeds-op League of Legends Wiki: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Zed Patch 5.2 notes: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-52-notes

20 Comments

Sailor Mint2/9/2015, 4:03:49 AM2 votes

He's a strong split pusher who's primary source of damage is a single target physical damage delayed nuke with a damage amplification attached to it.

  • The Bulk of Death Mark's damage comes from amplifying his melee range skills, the Mark itself deals pitiful base damage. This means he has to put himself at risk if he wants to deal max damage.
  • Delayed damage means it can be healed and shielded.
  • The initial cast is blocked by spellshields (including Banshee's Veil) and the Mark itself can be removed by QSS. Immunities will completely block the Mark damage.
  • Since it only counts actual damage dealt, shields and damage reduction abilities ruin his damage.
  • Crowd Controlling Zed while Death Mark is active can keep the damage down to a minimum.
  • He struggles against Seeker's rush and Zhonya's makes him lose kill threats/turn matchups in his opponent's favor.
  • His wave clear is short range, therefore not relevant for siege situations.
  • He has no crowd control of his own and is a free kill if he gets engaged on with his W on CD.

Zed is good at taking down a single target and cleaning up messy fights. He's a strong duelist, but he's not great at teamfighting and fairly useless in a siege. That's why he's used as a split pusher.

How many champions can "lose their lane" at 0/0 while outcsing their opponent, just because an item made them lose kill threat and blue buff makes them shove as hard if not harder than they can?

Hacccchan2/9/2015, 3:46:00 AM2 votes

Hello friends! I just wanted to put out my opinion, be free to share your own opinions too in the comments!

SavingGraces2/9/2015, 4:13:35 AM1 votes

Zed's "tons of damage" is very much tied to Death Mark. You must remember that Death Mark gives you only a small window (3s) of opportunity to do damage. If you miss this window, your burst damage is cut down immensely. Any stun, root, silence, knockup, etc, can waste your short 3 second chance to do damage. You must also remember that Death Mark is easily countered by Zhonya's Hourglass and Quicksilver Sash as well as anyone with invulnerability. This means that a Zed player is reliant on priority targets not having Zhonya's, QSS, hard cc, or invulnerability (Kayle, Fizz, Trynd, Fiora, etc). Zed's strength lies in the ability to go in on lone people. This is very useful for splitpushing where you are likely to not encounter the entire enemy team. However, in teamfights, his specific skillset is very poor. He is locked down as soon as he goes into a fight and cannot do damage in the Death Mark window. Every time you go in during a teamfight, you take a massive gamble. With engage and teamfight comps now becoming the meta, Zed is an increasingly risky pick to play. Picking Zed is a huge risk especially in draft mode ranked games where the enemy can counterpick you with ease. There is a reason why Zed's popularity has plummeted considerably in the highest levels of play. It is because anyone that has cc, or that is good with Zhonya's/QSS, or has invulnerability, or is good in teamfights, has big counterplay to Zed. In other words, most champions, BASICALLY EVERYONE IN THE GAME has a way of effectively fighting back against Zed. There are other issues with other champions (Sivir invulnerability bug) that should be addressed instead.

Kuroi862/9/2015, 4:44:41 AM1 votes

An assassin has tons of damage... well, we can't have that now can we?

Resiliency... he builds glass cannon and has to get in melee range to deal the bulk of his damage. Considering 90% of CC has damage tacked on, no, Zed can't just jump out unharmed after CC ends, unless you've discovered a bug that heals Zed for all damage he takes any time he uses a shadow.

Wave clear, the one aspect that I agree needs toning down, the AS nerf helped, but expect more in the near future. Exactly what? Not sure, I've a few guesses, but we'll have to see.

Stonington2/9/2015, 5:53:17 AM1 votes

Am I the only one who never sees Zed win any games ever? Whether he's on my team or the enemy team he loses almost every game. And the games he wins aren't because of him.

Hacccchan2/10/2015, 1:32:06 PM1 votes

See? vid here shows zed is op https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSXcEzXxHuo

kappa

Hacccchan2/10/2015, 9:49:08 PM1 votes

Ok everyone please look at the links before posting just to put it out there >.< links at bottom of article

Hacccchan2/10/2015, 10:12:45 PM1 votes

oh yeah guys they fixed the sivir, nocturne, and banshees veil bug now

TheStranger022/9/2015, 3:56:12 AM1 votes

Now there is zed with smite which is "more op" :')